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1993
Cognition, Emotion, and Memory: Some
Applications and Issues
Henry C. Ellis
Paula T. Hertel
Trinity University, [email protected]
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Cognitive Psychology Applied
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Ellis, H. C., & Hertel, P. T. (1993). Cognition, emotion, and memory: Some applications and issues. In C. Izawa (Ed.), Cognitive
psychology applied (pp. 199-215). New York, NY: Erlbaum.
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Cognition, Emotion, and
Memory: Some Applications
and Issues
Henry C. Ellis
University of New Mexico
Paula T. Hertel
Trinity University
This chapter describes some ways in which the psychology of cognition, emo­
tion, and memory can or might be applied in several practical settings. Recent
years have seen a rapid growth in research on cognition and emotion and this
research has been summarized in a variety of sources (e.g., Ellis & Ashbrook,
1988, 1989; Ellis, Varner, & Becker, in press; Fiedler & Forgas, 1988; lsen,
1984; Kuiken, 1989; Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1988). Moreover,
.
a new journal appeared in 1987, Cognition and Emotion, which is entirely
devoted to relations among emotional states and the full range of cognitive
processes typically studied by psychologists. Ellis and Ashbrook (1989) noted
that although this research area has a much earlier history of activity, it lay
relatively dormant until the mid-l 970s. However, its growth has accelerated
rapidly until it has now become an important and active area of research and
theoretical deveJopment.
We believe that a discussion of the application of this area is now timely, and it
is prof�table to consider how the domain of cognition, emotion and memory is
either currently or potentially applicable. In this chapter we have not attempted to
be comprehensive in detailing a number of applications; rather, we have selec­
tively focused on four arenas of application either in progress or having potential
application. These include the maintenance and repair of disturbed moods, cog­
nition and emotion in health behaviors, emotion and eyewitness testimony, and
emotional states in human performance.
199
MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR
OF DISTURBED MOODS
Most of us occasionally experience episodes of disturbed affect from which we
wish to escape. For some such disturbance qualifies as a depressive or anxiety­
related disorder, whereas others are affected on a more transient or less profound
basis. Regardless of the severity of the disturbance, it appears to be characterized
by identifiable patterns of cognitive phenomena and concomitant complaints.
One important direction for the application of research on cognition and emotion,
then, is provided by its implications for mood maintenance and subsequent
repair. Moods are maintained by ongoing cognitive functions. Mood distur­
bances are repaired by changes in these functions or in their focus.
We identify two categories of ways in which negative mood states-anxiety
and depression, in particular-might be maintained and repaired through the
involvement of cognitive procedures. The first category concerns the direct
involvement of cognitive procedures in maintenance and repair. In this category,
we briefly outline the literature on mood congruency, or the focus of mental
processes on episodes and materials that are meaningfully related to the mood
state. We also describe research concerning the nature of impairments experi­
enced when depressed and anxious people encounter the relatively neutral mate­
rials of their educational and occupational endeavors.
The second type of cognitive involvement in the maintenance and repair of
disturbed affect is indirect. Disturbed moods are indirectly maintained by failures
to perform well in cognitive tasks. Test-anxious students, for example, become
increasingly anxious with each failure. Depressed people perhaps remain de­
pressed as long as they fail to achieve in ways that provide social approbation or
increase self-esteem. Improving cognitive performance indirectly assists in mood
repair by helping mood-impaired people to experience self-efficacy and to
achieve important goals (see Hertel, in press). In these ways cognitive procedures
are indirectly implicated, because the disturbed moods are maintained or repaired
by the outcomes of cognitive tasks. Yet, it is important to keep in mind that
disturbed moods are centrally associated with the tendency to perform poorly in
the first place (see Ellis & Ashbrook, 1988). In each of the following sections on
the maintenance and repair of disturbed moods, we address both the direct and
the indirect nature of emotional and cognitive interactions.
Mood Maintenance
Disturbed moods are maintained by selective attention to mood-congruent as­
pects of current and past experience (lsen, 1984; W illiams, Watts, MacLeod, &
Mathews, 1988). Attention to mood-congruent elements of an event appears to
be a relatively automatic process and, moreover, one that diverts attention away
from more task-appropriate processing. Such selectivity maintains the disturbed
200
9.
COGNITION, EMOTION, AND MEMORY
201
mood directly by bringing congruent information to mind and indirectly by
impeding performance on the task at hand. Mood maintenance can also result
from selective remembering of past events, and if the mood-impaired person
actively rehearses these negatively valenced memories the moods are further
maintained. We next describe a few examples to illustrate the evidence for mood­
congruent attention and remembering and to suggest their involvement in the
maintenance of disturbed moods.
Selective Attention.
To what extent do mood-congruent materials capture the
attention of mood-impaired people? The evidence suggests that anxiety in partic­
ular is associated with such selective attention (see Williams et al., 1988). For
example, in a study by Eysenck, Macleod, and Mathews (1987) trait-anxious
subjects more often than nonanxious subjects spelled homophones (such as
die/dye) to coincide with the more threatening concept. Much earlier, Postman
and Brown ( 1952) demonstrated similarly that depressed subjects detected
failure-related words at very brief exposures more frequently than did non­
depressed people and more frequently than other words. Symptoms of depression
and anxiety are highly correlated, so we cannot address the specificity of the
selectivity to a particular type of disturbance, but we can conclude that disturbed
moods are associated with attention to mood congruent information.
Consider the implications of such evidence for performance in typical cog­
nitive tasks. The kinds of tasks that anxious and depressed people typically
encounter in educational and occupational settings are usuaJly neutral, in that the
materials are not particularly related to the nature of their moods. Yet the tasks
dearly provide potential sources of threat and failure if one's ongoing perfor­
mance of them is evaluated self-referentially. In this manner, disturbed moods
encourage the allocation of attention to inappropriate aspects of the self or the
situation and distract attention away from task-appropriate processing (see Ellis
& Ashbrook, 1988; Ingram, 1990). By making the assumption that attentional
resources are limited, we can understand how mood-impaired people might not
perform well on what are thought to be neutral tasks. Thus, selective attention to
mood-congruent aspects of current processing episodes directly maintains the
disturbance by bringing such information to mind and indirectly maintains the
disturbance by hampering performance on everyday cognitive tasks.
Selective Remembering.
Disturbed moods also guide the recruitment of
mood-related memories. Mood-congruent retrieval can occur on a relatively
automatic basis (i.e., when people are not consciously attempting to remember
events from the past, but make use of them in the performance of some other
task), o r they can occur in more controJled episodes of remembering.
As an illustration of possible automatic effects of mood-congruent retrieval,
consider a study by Mathews, Mogg, May, and Eysenck (1989). In the first phase
of the experiment, anxious and nonanxious subjects imagined scenes for threat-
202
ELLIS AND HERTEL
ening and nonthreatening words and judged their pleasantness. This phase was
followed by two tests. In one test, subjects were given three-letter stems for old
and new words and instructed to complete them with the first word that came to
mind. The anxious subjects completed the stems of old threatening words more
often than other types of words, but nonanxious subjects did not show this bias in
recruiting threatening materials from the first phase. In the other test, the subjects
were asked to use the three-letter stems as cues for conscious recall of the
Phase-I words; here, their recall of threatening material was not reliably corre­
lated with anxiety (also see Mathews & MacLeod, 1985). Furthermore, some­
times anxiety is associated with reduced recall of threatening materials (see
Mogg, Mathews, & Weinman, 1987).
Others (see Mueller, 1980) have shown anxiety-congruent effects, so the story
regarding intentional recall by anxious subjects is not a simple one (see Ingram &
Kendall, 1987). But the evidence regarding depression is much clearer: De­
pressed people tend to recall negatively valenced events from the past (see
reviews by Blaney, 1986; Bower, 1981; Johnson & Magaro, 1987). W illiams et
al. ( 1988, chap. 10) believed that the picture regarding depressive versus anxious
recall can be clarified by considering the different momentary goals of depressed
and anxious people.
Williams and colleagues proposed that depression and anxiety involve differ­
ent types of biased processing of mood-related events. Quick detection of poten­
tial threat is a central concern of the fearful person, thus automatic processes
involved in the allocation of attention are sensitive to anxious moods. Then,
depending on whether subsequent avoidance of continued exposure to the threat
is an important goal, controlled processes might divert attention from its source.
In this manner, anxious subjects would not elaborately process threatening mate­
rials on initial exposure and therefore would not have cues available for subse­
quent intentional recall. The effects of depression are in some ways opposite to
the effects of anxiety, according to Williams and colleagues. The depressed
person actively processes negative information at the time of initial exposure by
attempting to reconcile that information in the context of goals for overcoming
depression.
In short, the differing goals of depressed and anxious people have correspond­
ing implications for the processes involved in mood maintenance and repair. The
answer to the question of whether mood-congruent retrieval serves to maintain
disturbed moods depends importantly on subsequent processing of the retrieved
episode. If that subsequent processing does not achieve a change in mood state,
the ongoing mood is maintained or enhanced by attention to mood-related as­
pects of experience.
Mood Repair
Clark and !sen (1982) were among the first to point out that disturbed moods are
repaired by controlled processing of mood-related information (cf. Blaney,
9.
COGNITION, EMOTION, AND MEMORY
203
1986). Active avoidance of mood-related materials can (at least temporarily)
inhibit the feeling state; active rehearsal of mood-related materials can reconcile
their meaning in the service of achieving self-control (Rehm, 1 982). These are
examples of direct actions of cognitive procedures in the repair of disturbed
moods. These direct effects are illuminated by considering cognitive/behavioral
approaches to treatments of anxiety and depression.
Direct Effects in Therapeutic Intervention.
Cognitive/behavioral therapies
are effective approaches to the treatment of depression (e.g., Teasdale, Fennell,
Hibbert, & Amies, 1 984) and anxiety (e.g., Wine, 1980). Often, they employ
techniques of "cognitive restructuring" of depressive or worrisome thoughts into
more realistic appraisals (Teasdale, 1983). How would research on basic cog­
nitive processes inform our understanding of how cognitive restructuring and
other therapeutic techniques repair disturbed moods?
According to the analysis by W illiams and colleagues (1988), remediation is
achieved in several ways. First, by encouraging the client to recall positive or
neutral aspects of their experience, the therapist directs attentional resources
away from mood-maintaining episodes. However, attention is redirected in the
context of the client's retrieval of negative-valenced ideations, such that the
rehearsal of realistic thoughts increase the probability that they will be selected
on future occasions of the same type (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979).
Second, by maintaining attention to negatively valenced events, the therapist can
use extinction or counterconditioning procedures to alter the valence of a particu­
lar memory. This potential is particularly rich in the case of anxiety, in which
avoidance-motivated controlled procedures operate. By hampering the tendency
to avoid threat, its impact can be chaJlenged (Foa & Kozak, 1986).
Therapeutic interventions provide good examples of the direct involvement of
cognitive procedures in mood repair. We tum our attention next to the topic of
their indirect involvement through attempts to improve performance of mood­
impaired people on typically neutral cognitive tasks.
Improving
Indirect Involvement of Cognitive Procedures in Mood Repair.
cognitive performance by depressed and anxious people can help them to achieve
the goals that might eventually assist in mood repair (Hertel, in press). Memory
complaints, for example, are common diagnostic indices of depression. We
speculate that depressed (and usually anxious) people do not worry about their
mem ory foibles simply because they dislike forgetting, but also because they are
concerned about their performances at school and in the workplace. A major
characteristic of depression, in particular, is the downward spiral produced by
decreasing achievements. We therefore question whether such failures are inev­
itable concomitants of depression or if achievement can be attained without
mood-related interventions.
Deficits in the allocation of attention to task-appropriate procedures are asso­
ciated with anxiety (Eysenck, 1982; W ine, 1980) and depressive moods and
204
ELLIS AND HERTEL
disorders (see Ellis, Thomas, McFarland, & Lane, 1985; Ellis, Thomas, &
Rodriguez, 1984; Hasher & Zacks, 1979; Roy-Byrne, Weingartner, Bierer,
Thompson, & Post, 1981). To some extent, these deficits might be biochemically
endemic to the disorders, through reduced production of neurotransmitters; phar­
macological agents that slow their re-uptake seem to improve performance on
some types of mental activities (see Weingartner & Herrmann, in press). How­
ever, we do know that the attentional resources that are available to depressed and
anxious people are sometimes allocated inappropriately to task-irrelevant
thoughts. Therefore, any procedure that directs allocation to task-appropriate
processes has the potential to improve the cognitive performance of mood­
impaired people.
Consider the results of an experiment conducted by Hertel and Rude (1991 a)
that compared the performance of clinically depressed (and often anxious) outpa­
tients to the performance of recovered outpatients and nonpsychiatric controls.
The task consisted of a learning phase, in which subjects made decisions about
the semantic fit of words in sentence frames, and a remembering phase, in which
recall of the targeted words was unexpectedly requested. In one condition of the
learning phase, subjects were required to pay attention to each target in. the
context of the sentence frame for the duration of the trial. In the other condition
(with the same trial duration), subjects' attention was unconstrained. Compared
to both control groups, depressed subjects in this Jatter condition recalled fewer
targets on the subsequent test, but mood-related differences were not produced
by subjects who were required to pay attention. Depressive deficits in recall can
be eliminated by guiding the procedures that are appropriate to the situation (see
Ellis, 1990; Hertel & Rude, 199lb).
An examination of evidence for depressive deficits in a variety of cognitive
tasks suggests that depressed subjects typically suffer deficits in cognitive ini­
tiative (Hertel & Hardin, 1990). That is, they do not spontaneously employ
cognitive procedures and strategies that characterize the performance of non­
depressed subjects. For example, experimental inductions of depressed moods by
Leight and Ellis (1981) produced poor detection of the optimal learning strategy,
but did not significantly hamper its use if it had been detected in a nondepressed
state. Similarly, depressed subjects in concept learning and problem-solving
tasks have difficulty producing hypotheses, but seem unimpaired in their ability
to test hypotheses provided by the experimenters (see Abramson, Alloy, &
Rosoff, 1981; Silberman, Weingartner, & Post, 1983). In these types of tasks, the
mind seems to "go blank" when a strategy is needed (Watts, MacLeod, &
Morris, 1988). Thus, depressive disorders may involve metacognitive impair­
ments, such as in the ability or tendency to monitor cognitive performance (Slife
& Weaver, in press). Clinical researchers have focused on the phenomenon of
impaired initiative in broader contexts of depression (see Coyne & Gotlib, 1983),
contexts that likely involve the need to plan, monitor, and concoct strategies.
In short, depressed people need help in determining what to do if they are to
9.
COGNITION, EMOTION, AND MEMORY
205
perform well in cognitive tasks. Although less is known about the metacognitive
functions of purely anxious people (e.g., nondepressed students with high levels
of test anxiety), their high degree of distractibiJity suggests that procedural in­
struction would also benefit their performance. Hertel (in press) outlined general
guidelines to be used in attempts to improve the cognitive performance of de­
pressed and anxious people. However, the practical advice that cognitive re­
search currently can provide is somewhat limited. In this regard, Watkins (1990)
seemed to be right in calling for the development of a taxonomy of procedures
involved i n typical cognitive tasks.
The larger arena of our concern with improving performance is mood repair.
If depressed and anxious people get the kind of help they need, their sense of
efficacy would no doubt improve. Bandura 's (1977) work on self-efficacy has
been extended to the domain of cognitive tasks by Hertzog (in press). When
feeling efficacious, mood-impaired people-like other people-attempt more
difficult cognitive tasks and are more persistent in their execution. The implica­
tions are clear: If we assist mood-impaired people in the selection of strategies
for perfonning some cognitive tasks, experiences of success on those tasks might
generalize to new situations. The hope is that such sma11 successes would ulti­
mately contribute to mood repair and future research on mood-related cognition
will point the way to achieving these goals.
COGNITION AND EMOTION
IN HEALTH BEHAVIORS
The area of health psychology has emerged in the past 25 years as an important
focus both for research and for practical applications in professional settings
(Kaplan, 1990). Much of health psychology in its early days was seen as part of
or related to behavioral medicine and was therefore viewed as an area in which
changes in the behavioral (unhealthy) activities of patients were brought about
principalJy by behavioral strategies and techniques. Seen in this light, unhealthy,
risky, or damaging behaviors were to be reduced or eliminated and substituted by
new, healthy appropriate behaviors. Accordingly, considerable emphasis was
placed on behavior modification procedures and activities derived from operant
conditioning procedures.
The role of cognitive processes in health has received substantial recognition
in recent years. The contribution of cognitive styles and activities to a diverse
number of health problems such as arthritis, hypertension, cancer, elevated blood
cholesterol, and heart disease has been widely discussed and is beyond the scope
of this chapter. Reviews of this extensive literature can be seen in many sources
(e.g., Rodin & Salovey, J 989). The importance of cognitive processes in health
has been recently highlighted by Seeman (1989), who stated that the cognitive
subsystem is "a domain that is so powerful in its impact on health that it would
206
ELLIS AND HERTEL
be difficult to overstate its centrality. In this domain, theory and research con­
verge to explain many facets of health behavior" (p. 1105). Examples of this
connection between cognition and health can be seen in Hamilton's ( 1982) model
of cognition as a way of explaining a person's appraisal and response to stress
situations, Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) model of stress, which is based on
cognitive processes including a person's interpretation of situations, Ellis and
Ashbrook's ( 1988) model of depression and memory, and Ottaviani and Becks'
(1988) cognitive theory of depression.
Prevailing conceptions of cognition and health have focused on the role of
cognitive processes as contributing factors in disease and, alternatively, on the
importance of positive cognitive outcomes as the result of various treatments.
More recently, the role of cognitive psy chology 's contribution to health has been
raised from another perspective. This third perspective examines what role con­
cepts and principles from cognitive psy chology might play in designing pro­
grams for the improvement of health. Consider, for example, a few instances of
concepts in cognitive psychology such as automatic and effortful processing, the
generation effect in memory, organization, elaboration, rehearsal, retrieval, se­
lective attention, implicit memory, distinctiveness, heuristics, imagery, reality
monitoring, schemas, spreading activation and network models, state-dependent
effects, encoding specificity, the self-referent effect, inferences in comprehen­
sion, mnemonic strategies, autobiographical memory, chunking, context effects,
rules for categorization, mood congruence, and the like. The majority of these
concepts have been extensively studied and have substantial experimental sup-·
port. We therefore believe that it is appropriate that concepts from both cognition
and emotion be considered as useful candidates for application to the solution of
health issues. We have in mind a program of application in which these concepts,
principles, and experimental findings be examined and evaluated for their poten­
tial or actual application to health issues. One way that this issue could be
approached is to determine what concrete, practical applications might be made
of specific concepts from cognition and emotion. As an example of this enter­
prise, a recent informal conference (1990) was organized by John Kihlstrom and
Rodney Cocking in which experts in the field of cognition, emotion, and moti­
vation met, under National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) auspices, and
began an initial exploration of how such concepts might be applied by acquired
immunodeficiency sy ndrome (AIDS)-specialists who are concerned with the
control and reduction of risky behaviors associated with this disease. I t is the
case that unsafe sexual activity and drug consumption are behaviors that occur
under emotional conditions so it is clear that any applications of cognitive con­
cepts must be made in the context of what is known about emotion as well. The
conference was a preliminary step toward more planning, so little can be reported
at this moment. W hat this does illustrate, however, is the beginning of an
enterprise that we view as very important.
EMOTION AND EYEWITNESS.T ESTIMONY
The last 20 years have seen a resurgence of interest in eyewitness testimony both
with respect to basic research questions and to the application of knowledge
about eyewitness testimony to the courtroom (e.g., Kassin, Ellsworth, & Smith,
1989; E. F. Loftus, 1983, 1986; Wells, 1986). A considerable body of knowl­
edge about many facets of eyewitness research, including factors associated with
the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, has grown. These include such topics
as the lack of any substantive correlation between eyewitness accuracy and
witness confidence, the effects of misleading postevent information and the
assumption of memory integration (E. F. Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978), weap­
on focus (E. F. Loftus, G. R. Loftus, & Messo, 1987), knowledge of jurors
about eyewitness perception and memory (Deffenbacker & E. F. Loftus, 1982),
and cross-racial identification bias (Brigham & Malpass, 1985), which are only a
few examples of this large research domain.
Recently Kassin and associates (1989) classified 21 major eyewitness testi­
mony topics ranging from the wording of questions, lineup instructions, stress,
event violence to weapon focus and cross-racial identification. Experts in the
area were asked to judge each topic with respect to the reliability of the experi­
mental evidence, whether or not the expert would testify, whether the expert had
testified, and whether the topic was of common knowledge to potential jurors. Of
the 21 topics, 13 were judged to be sufficiently reliable to be presented in court
by 70% or more of the experts. Topics such as wording of questions, lineup
instruc tions, and the effects of postevent information were judged to be highly
reliable, whereas the topic of gender differences in eyewitness testimony was
judged to be low in reliability.
For our purposes the topics of stress or emotional factors, weapon focus, and
the role of postevent information in memory integration are most pertinent to our
concerns. Knowledge about these topics is of obvious practical importance for
any experimental cognitive psychologist who chooses to testify in court and the
specific issue in all of these is the role that emotional factors play, if any, in
weapon focus and in memory integration. And, more generally, what role do
emotional states play in any aspect of eyewitness identification and testimony?
With respect to ·the issue of weapon focus, E. F. Loftus (1979) initially
assumed that this was an expected occurrence when an individual was highly
aroused. She assumed that in an obviously frightening situation, with a weapon
pointed directly at a person, the person would selectively focus on the weapon to
the neglect of other details. Subsequently, critics noted that although the idea was
certainly feasible, there was no solid evidence to support it. As a result, Loftus
conducted several studies that are summarized in E. F. Loftus and associates
( 1987), which do demonstrate the viability of weapon focus as an identifiable
result of emotional effects on perception and memory of a threatening event.
207
208
ELLIS AND HERTEL
The issue of memory integration is somewhat more complex. E. F. Loftus and
associates ( 1978) argued that postevent information becomes integrated with the
earlier learned information so as to become integrated or blended into a single
memory. The extreme of this position is that there is only the integrated memory
as distinct from two separate memories. Alternatively, there may be both an
integrated memory plus portions of the two separate memories. However, Mc­
Closkey and Zaragoza (1985) and Bekerian and Bowers (1983) argued that
Loftus' findings do not necessarily reflect an integration process but rather are
the result of response bias and/or problems in the integration paradigm and a
controversy as to the interpretation of Loftus' original findings continues today.
Thus the status of the original memory still remains controversial, and it conceiv­
ably may be transformed, lost, or perhaps remains simply inaccessible (e.g.,
E. F. Loftus, Donders, Hoffman, & Schooler, 1989; Zaragoza & McCloskey,
1989).
For our purposes, however, the question is: Do emotional states affect the
memory integration process? To our knowledge there is only one piece of evi­
dence on this question and the answer is decidedly positive. Franklin (1985)
conducted a study using the E. F. Loftus and associates' ( 1978) paradigm but
introduced a mood induction procedure. As in Loftus' study, subjects were given
either misleading infonnation or no information after observing a simulated
automobile-pedestrian accident. In addition, Franklin gave subjects either a neu­
tral or depressed mood induction following their observation of the accident. She
found that misleading information produced less accurate recognition of the
accident in both depressed and neutral mood subjects, and the effects of'mislead­
ing infonnation were much greater in depressed subjects. It should be noted that,
in this case, depression does not disrupt the encoding of the misleading infonna­
tion. If subjects had failed to encode the misleading information, then the de­
pressed subjects would have shown Jess tendency to have been mislead by the
questionnaire. In short, Franklin's (1985) study shows clearly that the induction
of a depressed mood amplifies the effects of misleading information.
As for emotion and memory in general, there is a substantial body of evidence
indicating that emotional states, whether natural or experimentally induced, in­
fluence memory in a variety of settings (e.g., Blaney, 1986; Ellis & Ashbrook,
1988, 1989; Johnson & Magaro, 1987; Williams et al., 1988). For example, Ellis
showed that the induction of depressed mood states produces poorer recall in a
variety of settings including organizational effects (Leight & Ellis, 1981), elab­
orative encoding, semantic processing, and effortful tasks (Ellis et al., 1984),
retrieval effects (Ellis et al., 1985), transfer of strategies (Leight & Ellis, 1981)
and thought listing and memory (Ellis, Seibert, & Herbert, 1990; Seibert & Ellis,
1991 ). It is quite reasonable to assume that these effects could also appear in
studies of eyewitness testimony, although comparable conditions have not yet
been researched.
Not all experiments have shown recall decrements with depression and it
,
9.
209
COGNITION, EMOTION, AND MEMORY
appears to be the case that depressive deficits are most likely to occur with
relatively intense emotional states and with relatively demanding criterion tasks
(e.g., Ellis, 1985; Ellis & Ashbrook,
1988;
Hertel & Hardin,
1990). Finally,
the
few studies of memory under extreme emotion appear to yield mixed results. In
his review of these effects, Baddeley
(1990)
noted that not only do prosecution
and defense lawyers differ in their opinions about the effects of extreme emotion,
but the mixed experimental results do follow a reasonable pattern. Studies using
a high level of arousal usually find an impairment of memory, whereas studies
employing low levels of arousal report either no effects or small facilitation
effects on memory.
There are ways in which eyewitness testimony for events can be improved
based on principles of memory. Ellis
(1987)
described nine general principles,
such as elaboration, organization, distinctiveness, and the practice of retrieval,
whose application can be used to facilitate memory. Similarly, Fisher and
Geiselman ( 1988) developed what they called the cognitive interview designed to
facilitate retri�val of information based on four general principles: (a) mentally
reinstating the environment and personal contact that occurred at the time the
crime was witnessed; (b) encouraging the reporting of all details; (c) attempting
to recall the incident in several different orders, and (d) reporting the incident
from several different perspectives. In a test of this interview procedure,
Geiselman, Fisher, MacKinnon, and Ho1land
(1985) found approximately
a 35%
improvement in recall over the standard police interview procedures.
Finally, the role of emotion in the related topic of flashbulb memories is an
issue of considerable debate (Neisser & W inograd,
1993).
It is not possible to
summarize the large literature on flashbulb memories in any simple fashion here.
In general, there is a positive relation between degree of emotion and the vivid­
ness o f the memory. In contrast, the role of affect in memory accuracy seems
more complex. We are in agreement with Reisberg and Heuer
( 1993),
who
concluded that flashbulb memories are undermined by emotion in some situa­
tions by impeding retrieval, whereas emotion may improve memory for some
sorts of material as seen, say, in the mood-congruence situation.
EMOTIONAL STATES
AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE
This section briefly considers the significance of emotional states for human
perfonnance. Newspaper reports of aircraft accidents frequently note that stress
was a factor in producing pilot error and, similarly, aircraft controllers have been
obse rved to make errors in judgment when under conditions of stress produced
by heavy workloads (cf. Ellis & Hunt, 1993). Newspaper reports, personal
experiences, and everyday observations of events all attest to the idea that human
perfonnance can be readily influenced by emotional states. As Darke
(1988)
210
ELLIS AND HERTEL
observed, the research literature provides strong evidence that emotional states,
such as anxiety, produce performance decrements, especially with capacity de­
manding tasks. Similarly, Ellis and Ashbrook (1988), in their resource allocation
model, proposed that induced or natural mood states will have their most pro­
nounced effects on difficult, demanding, poorly structured, or highly effortful
tasks. And a large number of experiments support this generalization.
The literature on fear, dangerous environments, and performance has been
reviewed by ldzikowski and Baddeley (1983) and points to a wide range of
performance decrements associated with fear. Likewise, Sarason (1975) showed
test performance decrements due to anxiety in a number of settings and the
effects appear to be amplified with more difficult tasks. The effects, however, are
not always simple, with anxiety at low levels facilitating performance as the
result of arousal, but anxiety at high levels interfering with performance due to
increased distraction. Indeed, the process of distraction has been assumed to be
important by Ellis and Franklin (1983) in accounting for personality styles on
memory performance and by Ellis and colleagues (1990) and by Seibert and EJlis
(1991) in accounting for the way in which thinking about irrelevant tasks (dis­
tracting thoughts) interferes with memory. Other studies (e.g., Mueller, 1979)
have also reported detrimental effects of anticipated danger on memory.
Baddeley ( 1990) also described the effects of emotion on simulated combat
performance. Walker and Burkhardt (1965) looked at error performance in weap­
ons control systems and found that the error rates in operating bomb and missile
control systems increased as stress levels increased. This finding is, of course,
quite consistent with the predicted interaction between emotional levels and task
demands as proposed by the Ellis-Ashbrook (1988) resource allocation model
and by Revelle and Loftus' model (1990).
Finally, an important feature of much of the research on emotional effects on
performance attempts either to produce the emotional state under highly realistic
conditions or to examine performance in work settings (e.g., Walker & Burk­
hardt, 1965) or both. In an interesting set of experiments, Keinen, Friedland, and
Arad (1991) simulated stress in a very convincing manner. In the high stress
condition, subjects were trainees in a parachuting course just learning to jump.
They were sitting on a runway, harnessed with their parachutes, waiting to board
an airplane for their first night parachute jump. Parachute jumping can reason­
ably be said to be a stressful experience (Keinen, 1986) and it may be further
assumed that inexperience and the prospect of parachuting in the night would add
to the subjects' stress. In the low stress condition, the subjects carried out the
criterion task during a I-day break in training. The criterion task was a classifica­
tion procedure in which subjects categorized a list of objects. Interestingly,
subjects under high stress categorized the objects more rapidly but employed
fewer groups to categorize the objects than did the low stress subjects, suggesting
less attention to distinctive features or an overgeneralization process due to
stress.
9.
COGNITION, EMOTION, AND MEMORY
211
We summarize by noting that the study of emotional states and human perfor­
mance has considerable practical importance. Many of our everyday tasks are
performed under transient or prolonged emotional states and it is therefore impor­
tant to understand the role of emotion in human performance as well as ways in
which individuals might learn to cope with stress and intense emotional states
while engaged in demanding tasks. Some suggestions of how the latter might be
accomplished were mentioned in the earlier section on the maintenance and
repair of disturbed moods.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
This chapter has examined four areas in which research findings and theory in the
domain of cognition and emotion might be applied to practical settings. These
include the maintenance and repair of disturbed moods, cognition and emotion in
health behaviors, emotion and eyewitness testimony, and the role o f emotional
states in human performance. Disturbed moods were seen to be maintained by
mood congruent aspects of current and past experiences that involve both selec­
tive attention and selective remembering. Mood repair can occur by way of direct
effects o f therapeutic intervention or by the indirect involvement of cognitive
procedures in mood repair. The issue of mood repair is the more fundamental of
our concerns. Cognition and emotion research is beginning to play an even more
important role i n designing programs for improving health behaviors. Several
models of cognition and emotion have been developed that do have value in
organizing health programs. The role of emotion in eyewitness testimony was
examined with respect to weapon focus and memory integration. Weapon focus
now appears to be a valid phenomenon and depressed mood states do interfere
with memory in the Loftus integration paradigm. Finally, emotional states have
long been shown to interfere with human performance in a variety of tasks and
these effects are greatest with effortful, demanding tasks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The preparation of this chapter was supported by the College of Arts and Sci­
ences, University o f New Mexico, to Henry Ellis and by Grant No. R03
MH44044 from the National Institute of Mental Health to Paula Hertel. The
order of authorship is alphabetical.
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